


Filial Crush

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Father Figures, Feels, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4313814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt- in the post-game haze one Gamzee Makara needs something that only a lusus can fulfil, and he has become aware of Dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filial Crush

The game was over- it was done. The consequences were many and horrible, but it was finally and very firmly in the past. All that remained was to find a way to get along with each other, to live with each other. A god-tier infinite existence pales in comparison to a real and human life with other people.

Dad was up at what he liked to refer to as cock-crow every day. In fat, it was just the moment that his alarm went off. In fact, he only called it that because John tended to flush slightly when he said the words “cock-crow.”

Dad made himself busy in the kitchen getting things ready. Pancakes, and waffles, and potato-grits just the way he made them with all the salt and oil. By the time John worked his way downstairs with a yawn there was inevitably a full breakfast spread waiting. By the time John had worked his way through a plate of it the irritable and grouchy form of Karkat was downstairs and demanding a share. Dad could not begin to explain how happy he was.

“Well boys,” Dad began as he often did, “I want you to work hard at school today, you hear?”

John and Karkat shared a look. In the beginning it had been all right, cute, even, but it was getting harder every day and John was showing it the more of the two of them.  
“Sure,” John said, “we'll work hard.”

Karkat glared at him and made a 'go on!' gesture. As in many mornings before, John was not going to say anything.

After the game, they had been given their big chance- their opportunity- the one final chance to put things right. And of course they had wanted to put things back the way that they should have been, but it was a poison chalice. John woke each morning and shaved the stubble that had grown each night. He came home every day and curled up in bed with with the boyfriend who was very much not simply there for a sleepover... and every morning his dad made them breakfast and admonished them to do well in school. They had put things back to the way that they had been, but in doing so they had set their world in amber; perfectly preserved and unchanging forever. As a child, John would have been more then thrilled by the idea but as a teenager on the very cusp of manhood it was killing him.

“Sure,” he said, the same as every morning. Just as he had in countless mornings before, Karkat glared at him balefully.

There was no point in discussing it any more. John was well aware that Karkat was being correct and reasonable in everything he said, but h e would nonetheless not accept it. Dad was Dad, and that was that. Any other possibility was beyond the realm of what John was prepared to accept and Karkat was not able or willing to push him further then a certain point. So it was that the two of them had to deal with a consistently clowning, joking, prankster jester looking after them even as the weeks had turned into months.

John had a job in a local publisher, and Karkat was making do with an internship in a radio station. Neither of them was producing nearly enough to consider moving into a place of their own, and besides Dad would never hear of his youthful charge moving out of the familial nest. 

John finished and gave Karkat a glance. The troll was familiar with the idea of eating food as quickly as trollfully possible in order to avoid showing the least sign of vulnerability to potential predators and so he would gobble his breakfast in mere moments. Between the two of them they had worked out a system between the two of them which led to their finishing the breakfast at the same time.

They moved to leave. John was in no mood to engage with his father's usual nonsense on this morning and Karkat knew it. Neither of them was feeling like having an argument over it. John strode down the concrete pathway to his car and hesitated, holding a hand up. Karkat paused behind him.

“Hey!” John called out, “he I can see you there! I see you, come out!”  
Behind him, Karkat groaned and shook his head, “just leave it?”  
John span on his heel for a moment, “I'm not leaving it, this is ridiculous, it has to stop!”  
“He doesn't mean any harm.”

John advanced on a bush, waving his hands and yelling. Sheepishly, slowly, Gamzee emerged. A piece of frond was dangling from one of his horns.

“Gamzee!” John yelled, redundantly, “what are you even doing here?”  
“Leave it,” karkat sighed, “for me?”  
“No!” John turned on him, “not for you! This ends, now! I'm sick of this bullshit!”  
“John! Egbert human, please! This is merely the tiniest tip of the bullshit-berg we have been communally dealing with ever since this whole pile of actual ridicuousness began! He's harmless!”  
“This is a plot! Or a ploy!”  
“Yes, and I am sure there is an actual difference between those two things, which you are aware of, but I'm sorry John. I really am. But I have an actual fucking job-”  
“An internship!”  
“An internship to get to! I can't be dealing with this and neither can you! Now get in the fucking human miniature-van and let's go!”

They got into the minivan and went. All the while John was giving Gamzee the most disproving and hateful look he could muster. It was an effort.

Dad busied himself in the kitchen. At the same time, he was both planning the evening meal and the intricate series of pranks which his son would have to endure on the way to the table. It would be a thing of beauty. He looked up when Gamzee knocked plaintively on the sliding glass door leading out into the garden, and went to open it.

“Well now! I don't see anyone here, it looks as though I am mistaken in opening the door!”  
“It's totally me, dadbro. I'm down here.”  
“I'm sure that I cannot seen anything beneath the bristling bush of hair before me!”  
Gamzee grinned sheepishly and pushed a handful of hair away from his forehead.  
“It's me, Gamzee!”  
“Why, that is both a shock and a welcome surprise! Will you not come in and have a cup of something warming and a victual or two?”

It was a game they played every day, with subtle variations on the theme but always ending in the same way. Gamzee happily gambolled into the kitchen and sat himself upon his favourite chair while Dad prepared a repast for him. It was already an established fact between the two of them that Gamzee was allowed to eat all he wanted.

“What brings you my way then, Gamzee?”  
“Same as every morning, motherfucker, the for real bestest of pie!” Gamzee spoke around a gleeful grin full of pie.

Dad was nonplussed, as he had been before. It was not the cursing that got to him, but the idea that Gamzee had been there many times before. Deep in his mind he knew that it was true, and yet at the same time he was fully and very strictly aware that this was the day after his son's thirteenth birthday. That date, and no further.

“Gamzee, I must say that you insist on coming out with the most extraordinary of stories!”  
“Maybe,” Gamzee shrugged, “but so what? I mean, a pie is a pie, right? A story is just... stuff.”  
“I suppose that you are right there,” Dad shrugged. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose for a moment, frowning, he knew that stories were more important then that, somehow.

Gamzee pushed the plate against his face and licked greedily, and Dad obliged him with another slice of pie when asked.

“Say, Gamzee,”  
“Yeah?”  
“Remind me how you met John?”  
“Motherfucker up and created the universe, or somesuch,”  
“That's a queer old thing to be saying.”  
“Yeah,” Gamzee nodded soberly, “it's all been a straight up set o' miracles.”  
“Yes,” Dad stroked the back of his neck thoughtfully, and when he brought his hand back down he stared into the palm reflectively, “it's certainly a queer old thing.”  
“Hey, don't worry 'bout it,”  
“I know, yes, I'm not worried,”  
“It's just the way that things is.”  
“True, that's just the way that things are. Not is.”  
“The way that things are.”  
“Mm,”

Dad went back to the kitchen, he was already planning another pastry-based triumph. Behind him, Gamzee watched, enraptured, his chin in his hands. Gamzee's eyes were glowing softly, whether through the sense of contentment he felt or his natural affinity for the chucklevoodoos made no difference.

Dad made a point of reading the paper every mid-afternoon and Gamzee did't try to stop him. The troll knew about the importance of ritual. Gamzee sat himself attentively on the floor cross-legged while Dad read.

“Hey, dadbro?”  
“You don't need to call me that you know,”  
“Well I'm not sure on the whole human titles and names and shit,”  
Dad carefully folded his paper and looked Gamzee in the eye with a firm, but supportive expression that made Gamzee practically sit up an d wag his tail if he had only had one.  
“What are you trying to ask me, Gamzee?”  
“I was actually thinkin' on the same things as you. I mean, I can't just be callin' you random shit, right?”  
“I suppose,”  
“So I got to think of an actual thing to, like, call you?”

Dad frowned and put the paper away, fixing Gamzee with a stern, paternal look.  
“Normally this is not so much of a problem, you know.”  
“Yeah, I mean, sure yeah that's so, but I mean, it's different for trolls.”  
“How so?”  
“We got to, like, have a title for fuckin' everything, man. I mean, I know it's like a crock of shit? But I got to have it. I mean, I need to like have a thing to call you. An actual... Thing.”  
“If it makes things easier, my name is James.”

That didn't make things easier. Gamzee actually winced, it was too much. Too personal. He couldn't deal with approaching Dad on that level, and it showed.

“I can't,” Gamzee waved vaguely, “you know?”  
“All right, let's look at this another way. Imagine that we were both on your world. Can you picture it?”  
“Fuck yes! I can see all o' that shit right now. I got a sick-ass hive with bitchin' pictures on all of the walls, and all sorts of shit.”  
“Yes... well, imagine that I am there too.”

Gamzee screwed up his eyes and put his hands over them too.

“Can you see it?”  
“For sure,” Gamzee nodded.  
“Now, imagine I'm there too.”  
“Okay, I'm... okay.”  
“What do you see when you look at me?”

Gamzee muttered something.

“Come now, speak up, please?”  
“My lusus, I guess?”  
“And what is that?”

Gamzee was befuddled at the best of times, and he could not remember whether they had undertaken this conversation before, but the face of the elder Egbert displayed only the most open and honest aspect. Gamzee clucked his tongue thoughtfully and considered his answer carefully.

“You know how, when you are all, like, young and shit?”  
“Yes, I suppose so,”  
“And how, you can't, like, get food for yourself and find shelter properly, yeah?”  
“I'm with you so far.”  
“If you're a lucky motherfucker and, like, the stars are right and shit then your lusus come down and take up up in it's claws or gnashers or whatever, and it look after you.”  
“That sounds horrible!”  
“Oh yes,” Gamzee nodded knowingly, “and that's if you lucky. Some motherfuckers they have a lusus who is all, wedded to the sea and shit. Like, hey little grubfucker, I fuckin' like you man but my only love is the sea, so I'll see you round. Except all o' that is expressed in, like, angry chattering jaws.”  
“I think I understand?”  
“You do?”  
“Of course. If you were a human, you'd be talking about, I suppose, your father.”  
“Yeah, I guess?”  
“Do you know what that is?”  
“Sure!” Gamzee lied, “like, yeah of course.”  
“Imagine if your lusus was never going to leave you behind, and was going to look after you forever, no matter what.”

Gamzee was imagining it. He had been imagining it for some time.

“That's what a father is, at least in my estimation.” Dad nodded firmly and reached for his pipe, to emphasise the point.  
“You're so fuckin' wise, I think.”  
“Gamzee?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Do you have one of these lususes?”  
“Lusii,” Gamzee corrected, because some things simply shall not stand, “I dunno. I mean, I been down to the sea. I yelled at the waves till I got tired, but it didn't make no difference. They just comin' on in, and goin' on out, you know?”  
“Do you have any one to look after you?”  
“Shit, what are you even goin' on about?”

James Egbert just chuckled softly and filled his pipe.  
“How about this. Any time you want to come around here, there will be a warm pie waiting for you. And if there isn't, then- why, I'll bake one up.”  
“You for real, man?”  
“I am, as you say, both for real and a man.”

That was better. Better then yelling into the ocean, better then hoping against hope for the best in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.

By evening, John pulled into the drive and got out of his stubby minivan with Karkat. They made their way to the front door and before John could open it the door opened and Gamzee barrelled out, barging past John and off into the darkening night.  
“You!” John squealed, “You saw it! This isn't right! Every day, this happens!”  
Karkat sighed and put a hand on John's shoulder, squeezing gently.  
“Let it go.”  
“Why should I? This is unconscionable, it's clearly some kind of a plot!”  
“No, it's not.”  
“Why should I put up with this? Why are you even so calm about it, you know what he did!”  
“I know, I know, just let this one go.”  
John grunted and pushed the door open roughly. He didn't want to see his dad in that moment.  
“John,”  
“What?”  
Karkat groaned and scratched at the space between his beetling eyebrows, “this is your fault, you know.”  
“Why? What did I do?”  
“You made a perfect world. What did you think? It was just going to be perfect for you?”  
“He's rapidly working through my last nerve, and there's not much left.”  
“Don't worry,” Karkat smiled wanly, “things will look better in the morning.”

And, they did.


End file.
